Portrait in the 4th or 5th Person Singular

He thinks she thinks he doesn’t exist, that he’s air, less than air, and lighter by far. She doesn’t. And that’s that. He wants to be meat, the ready tongue,

an abundant dish, to be pure noun. He pushes toward that and it draws back. He doesn’t think nouns embody absence as he thinks she thinks. I want to think

absence whitens the nerves. He drinks volumes to gain weight and emptiness sieves through him by the bucketful. He blinks and rises right to the ceiling.

He works to breathe. He thinks the now will hug him, that he’s not what’s missing in the middle of minutes and can happen to her, that his minutes aren’t just holes

as he thinks I think. There there I think. He thinks existence is beauty. But existence isn’t what we think. What hasn’t happened hurts. His sadness is almost palpable.